I am using Saxon HE 9.5 as my XSLT processor. Since the source is a large-sized XML, I need to minimize the size of output. However, using the Saxon HE will add line breaks between each element tags. Such as the following example:
<Element1>
<attr1>
test1
</attr1>
</Element1>
I want it to be like:
<Element1> <attr1> test1 </attr1> </Element1>
so that I can minimize the size of the output XML. Is there any way to do it?
I have tried to set indent="no", but the output XML is failed to open.
Thank you!
You can use <xsl:output indent="no"/> to turn off the indenting, but your line breaks in elements that contain text will still be there (even with <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>). You can use normalize-space() to remove them.
Example...
XML Input
<Element1>
<attr1>
test1
</attr1>
</Element1>
XSLT 2.0 (works as 1.0 too)
<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output indent="no"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<xsl:template match="#*|*|processing-instruction()|comment()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="text()">
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
XML Output
<Element1><attr1>test1</attr1></Element1>
The option indent="no" is the default. If you are getting indented output, then either (a) you have asked for it using indent="yes", or (b) the whitespace is present in the result tree before serialization. If the whitespace is present in the result tree, then either (b1) the stylesheet added it to the result tree, or (b2) it was copied from the source document. If (b2) is the cause, then putting <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> in your stylesheet might be the answer (assuming you don't have any significant whitespace in the source document that needs to be preserved).
We can't give anything other than general advice unless you show us your code.
Related
This is a follow up question to
how to get 'excel' new lines in spreadsheetML (MSXSLT)
but asked as a new question, to separate this into different issue, as the behaviour seems to be different between engines (I'll leave the specific context in the other question, this is purely how to achieve some functional result).
This XSLT (in saxon he) will create what I want.
<xsl:stylesheet
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<root>
<bar>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
</bar>
</root>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
and gives the output
<root>
<bar>
</bar>
</root>
this one wont:
<xsl:stylesheet
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common"
version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable name="foo">
<bar>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
</bar>
</xsl:variable>
<root>
<xsl:copy-of select="exsl:node-set($foo)"/>
</root>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
it gives
<bar> </bar>
(the question is about XSLT 1.0 but interestingly XSLT 3.0 can be made to work like this
<xsl:stylesheet
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="3.0">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable name="foo">
<bar>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
</bar>
</xsl:variable>
<root>
<xsl:sequence select="$foo"/>
</root>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
whilst
<xsl:copy-of select="$foo"/>
doesnt. Even following the 'sequence' pattern, I don't seem to be able to preserve non escaping in anything but a non trivial xslt - I've got a complex transformation using call-templates/apply-templates etc, and I think understanding how nodes are interpreted and serialised is not trivial)
There's actually a long history to this question, which was known in the working group as the "sticky d-o-e problem" (d-o-e being disable-output-escaping). The question is, does d-o-e have any effect when writing to a temporary tree (an xsl:variable), or is it only effective when writing to serialized output?
The XSLT 1.0 specification is pretty clear on the matter:
It is an error for output escaping to be disabled for a text node that
is used for something other than a text node in the result tree. Thus,
it is an error to disable output escaping for an xsl:value-of or
xsl:text element that is used to generate the string-value of a
comment, processing instruction or attribute node; it is also an error
to convert a result tree fragment to a number or a string if the
result tree fragment contains a text node for which escaping was
disabled. In both cases, an XSLT processor may signal the error; if it
does not signal the error, it must recover by ignoring the
disable-output-escaping attribute.
XSLT 2.0 deprecated d-o-e, but retained the rule in a slightly different form:
This [property], however, can be set only within a final result tree
that is being passed to the serializer.
But in between those two versions, the working group dithered. The XSLT 1.1 working draft (which never became a recommendation, but was popularised by the first version of my XSLT book) says:
When a root node is copied using an xsl:copy-of element ... and
escaping was disabled for a text node descendant of that root node,
then escaping should also be disabled for the resulting copy of that
text node. For example
<xsl:variable name="x">
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><</xsl:text>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:copy-of select="$x"/>
This is the "sticky d-o-e" - the d-o-e property is attached to the text node in the temporary tree and springs into life when the text node is eventually serialized. So this behaviour was endorsed at some stage in the life of XSLT, and you may be using a processor that implements this version of the spec.
Generally, though, try to forget that d-o-e exists. Whatever the problem, it's not the best solution. It's an incredibly messy feature because it requires a breaking of the architectural boundary between the transformation processor and the serializer, and breaking this boundary leads to close coupling of the transformation and serialization, and prevents you reusing the same code in a different pipeline configuration.
I'm afraid that researching the history of the W3C spec on this is rather easier than researching exactly what was implemented in early versions of Saxon (which are now nearly a quarter of a century old).
So to take the information from Michael Kay's answer which explains how the specification for XSLT 1.0 handles this, then we CAN implement a solution, for this.
So we take a recap of the underlying issue.
Excel spreadsheetML requires data to be formatted with the specific chars "
" to interpret a line feed in a cell (but this solution applies generally).
<Cell>Alpha
Bravo
Charlie</Cell>
If we try to write an XSLT to generate this, lets say naively:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<Cell>
<xsl:text>Alpha</xsl:text>
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
<xsl:text>Bravo</xsl:text>
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
<xsl:text>Charlie</xsl:text>
</Cell>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
our
will get delimited and we get this
<Cell>Alpha Bravo Charlie</Cell>
this (thanks to the answer on how to get 'excel' new lines in spreadsheetML (MSXSLT)) can be fixed by using
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<Cell>
<xsl:text>Alpha</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
<xsl:text>Bravo</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
<xsl:text>Charlie</xsl:text>
</Cell>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
which produces this:
<Cell>Alpha
Bravo
Charlie</Cell>
unfortunately this 'breaks' if you process your output document via some intermediary internal document e.g. even this:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable name="output">
<Cell>
<xsl:text>Alpha</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
<xsl:text>Bravo</xsl:text>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
<xsl:text>Charlie</xsl:text>
</Cell>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:copy-of select="msxsl:node-set($output)"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
reverts to:
<Cell>Alpha Bravo Charlie</Cell>
because (see Michael Hay's answer) the disable-output-escaping attribute gets ignored if its passed through some internal document (i.e. the variable).
So...how can you get around this?
If you generate a token for the LF, you can then construct your psuedo excel output almost in its entirety except you use a custom element to flag the LF char, and then you can process that DIRECTLY into the result tree and interpret the custom element as an unescaped "
"
so this:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:kookerella="kookerella.com"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl kookerella">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable name="output">
<Cell>
<xsl:text>Alpha</xsl:text>
<kookerella:LF/>
<xsl:text>Bravo</xsl:text>
<kookerella:LF/>
<xsl:text>Charlie</xsl:text>
</Cell>
</xsl:variable>
<!-- process data directly into the result tree only -->
<xsl:apply-templates select="msxsl:node-set($output)" mode="injectLF"/>
</xsl:template>
<!-- Inject LF -->
<xsl:template match="#* | node()" mode="injectLF">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#* | node()" mode="injectLF"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="kookerella:LF" mode="injectLF">
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"> </xsl:text>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#* | node()" mode="injectLF"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
now results in:
<Cell>Alpha
Bravo
Charlie</Cell>
P.S.
as an aside, this seems to work for me in both the various MSXSLT and Saxon HE, but I have had an instance of using the MSXSLT engine where even this doesnt work, presumably due to some configuration out output serialisation issue.
I have an XML:
<foo>
<bar>some text</bar>
</foo>
And I'm generating an HTML from it using XSTL, and looking for an Xpath (or some XSTL method, don't know) that gives me the whole content of foo. To illustrate my problem,
<xsl:value-of select="foo"/>
as expected, delivers only
some text
. But is there anything I can do to get
<bar>some text</bar>
? So to treat it as if the bar tags would be just ordinary strings.
Well, there's certainly no way of treating <tag> as a string, because XSLT sees the output of the XML parser, which is a tree of nodes: the tags have long since disappeared by the time XSLT swings into action.
But you can of course copy the element node as a whole, rather than just extracting its string value. Simply use <xsl:copy-of> in place of <xsl:value-of>.
You can use Copy
HTML
<foo>
<bar>some text</bar>
</foo>
XSL
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<xsl:template match="bar">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="node()|#*"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Output
<bar>some text</bar>
I am using XSLT 1.0, and using xsltproc on OS X Yosemite.
The source content is HTML; the target content is XML.
The issue is a fairly common one. I want all "uninteresting"
nodes simply to be discarded from the output. I've seen catch-all
directives like this:
<xsl:template match="node()|script"/>
<xsl:template match="*">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
This is close to what I need. But unfortunately, it's too strong when I need to add another template that visits one of the text nodes caught by node(). For example, suppose I added this template:
<xsl:template match="a/div[#class='location']/br">
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
which simply replaces certain <br/> elements with spaces.
Well, node() precludes this latter template from taking effect,
because the relevant text node containing the line-break is discarded
already!
Well, to correct the issue, here's what I have done in lieu of the catch-all node():
<xsl:template match="html/head|div[#id='banner_parent']|button|ul|div[#id='feed_title']|span|div[#class='submit_event']|script"/>
But this is precisely the problem: I am now piecing together a template
whose matching criteria is likely to be error-prone when the source
content changes.
Is there a simpler directive that would accomplish the same thing? I'm aiming for something like this:
<xsl:template match="node()[not(locations)]|script"/>
Thanks.
If i understood correctly, you want only some nodes in the output and the rest you dont care abour, in this example I try to catch only li elements and throw the rest away.. not sure if this is what you want though http://xsltransform.net/gWmuiKk
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:transform xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<xsl:output method="html" doctype-public="XSLT-compat" omit-xml-declaration="yes" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />
<!-- Lets pretend li is interesting for you -->
<xsl:template match="li">
<xsl:text>Interesting Node Only!
</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="#*|node()">
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:transform>
I have a problem, when trying to read a structure having < > in source XML.
Input Structure -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RecordsData>
<RecordsData>
<UID><RecordsData xmlns=""><RecordsData><UID>200</UID><RID>Test-1</RID><Date>20142812</Date><Status>N</Status></RecordsData></RecordsData></UID>
</RecordsData>
</RecordsData>
Expected Output Structure (there are two requirements) -
One is just conversion of < >into well formed XML tags.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RecordsData>
<RecordsData>
<UID><RecordsData xmlns=""><RecordsData><UID>200</UID><RID>Test-1</RID><Date>20142812</Date><Status>N</Status></RecordsData></RecordsData></UID>
</RecordsData>
</RecordsData>
Second is extraction of whole data inside UID tag with output as only below -
<RecordsData xmlns=""><RecordsData><UID>200</UID><RID>Test-1</RID><Date>20142812</Date><Status>N</Status></RecordsData></RecordsData>
I am able to get second output if I have first one in hand. But struggling to get first output from Input over last few days after searching forum extensively and being very new to XSLT.
If we can directly get second output from input source - it's actually what is expected solution. For above - I just tried to break down problem into steps.
Any of experts can you please help!
Thanks,
Conversion is easy, extraction is not.
To convert the escaped markup to real markup, simply disable the escaping when writing the node to the result tree, for example:
XSLT 1.0
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<!-- identity transform -->
<xsl:template match="#*|node()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="UID">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:value-of select="." disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Ideally, you would use the resulting XML file to extract any data from the escaped portion. Otherwise you would have to apply string functions for this purpose, since the escaped text is not XML.
However, in your example, you don't want to extract anything particular from the data, just isolate it and convert it to a stand-alone markup document. This can be easily accomplished by:
XSLT 1.0
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:value-of select="RecordsData/RecordsData/UID" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
I currently have a xml file like this:
<aaa>
<b>I am a <i>boy</i></b>.
</aaa>
How can I get the exact string as: <b>I am a <i>boy</i></b>.? Thanks.
You have to tell XSLT that you want to copy elements through as well. That can be done with an additional rule. Note that I use custom select clauses on my apply-templates elements to select attributes as well as all node-type objects. Also note that the rule for aaa takes precedence, and does not copy the aaa element itself to the output.
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="aaa">
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="#*|node()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="#*|node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
<aaa>
<b>I am a <i>boy</i></b>.
</aaa>
How can I get the exact string as:
<b>I am a <i>boy</i></b>.?
The easiest/shortest way to do this in your case is to output the result of the following XPath expression:
/*/node()
This means: "Select all nodes that are children of the top element."
Of course, there are some white-space-only text nodes that we don't want selected, but XSLT can take care of this, so the XPath expression is just as simple as shown above.
Now, to get the result with an XSLT transformation, we use the following:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:copy-of select="/*/node()"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
When this transformation is applied on the provided XML document, the wanted result is produced:
<b>I am a <i>boy</i></b>.
Do note:
The use of the <xsl:copy-of> xslt instruction (not <xsl:value-of>), which copies nodes, not string values.
The use of the <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> XSLT instruction, directing the XSLT processor to ignore any white-space-only text node in the XML document.